Your framework for client fee reviews and sales meetings

As a business, you serve to deliver value to your clients. Yet during the times that are most critical to be demonstrating this value, such as fee reviews or sales meetings, it is tempting to focus on yourself—your services, your products, your team—rather than the client.

This is why James Ashford from GoProposal developed a framework to guide their most important client meetings—The GLOSS Method™.

In his short video, James outlines an approach to demonstrate how you are helping your clients reach their goals and solving their greatest challenges. It is a method simple enough for your entire team to follow, and so transparent that you can even communicate the process to your clients.

The only way you're going to ultimately give that value to the client is if you're having better conversations with them and really understanding where they're trying to get to and what's preventing them from getting there.
James Ashford — GoProposal

In the framework, GLOSS stands for:

Goals

Location

Obstacles

Speed

Solution

Goals: Where are they trying to get to?

Before you can help your clients achieve anything, you need to know where they are trying to get to. You should focus on your client’s personal goals first and their business goals second because ultimately, the reason they are in business is to live the life that they want. You should encourage your client to be thinking in 90 days, 1 year, 3 years and their ultimate.

We need to know what the client's personal goals are because if we don't know that, we can't be providing them with the most value we possibly can.
James Ashford — GoProposal

Location: Where are they now?

You can't help anyone to get to where they want to be without knowing where they are now. This is critical when it comes to costing the solution. Here you should be looking for things like revenue, staff numbers, and number of transactions and debtor days.

We need to know what their revenue is, how many staff, the quality of their record keeping, how many transactions they have going through their accounts. Because we're going to use that information to price it.
James Ashford — Go Proposal

Your solution will be priced dynamically, which requires you to know:

Industry

Revenue

Record keeping quality (determined by you)

Staff numbers

Directors numbers

Transactions numbers

Invoice numbers

Purchase invoice numbers

Obstacles: What stands in their way?

Next, you need to explore what obstacles currently stand in your client’s way. These will normally be created due to a lack of one or more resources. Identifying these obstacles will help to inform what services they need.

Find out what is preventing them from reaching their goals in terms of:

Time

Money

People

Knowledge

Technology

Speed: How fast do they want to go?

The speed in which your client wants to move is dictated by their ambitions. Knowing this will help you present the correct level of service and will put some of the onus back onto the client to decide their level of investment.

At some point the client is going to be asking you, well how much is this going to cost? And one of the factors that's going to impact the cost is going to be how fast they want to go.
James Ashford — GoProposal

If your client wants to go fast you can do everything for them, freeing up their team completely.

If your client wants to go slower, you can do most things for them and train their team on how to do the rest. You can provide support on those activities moving forwards.

If your client has a lot of time and wants to keep costs down, then they can do most of it themselves, providing it conforms to your standards.

Solution: What is the best solution?

After learning where they are, where they want to be, what’s blocking them, and how fast they want to get there, you can now present the solution to your client. This will combine your services, products, software and training.

A lot of firms get to this point and will present three options. But if you've been through this process correctly, there should only be one solution—the best solution.
James Ashford — GoProposal

It’s not fair on the client to give them too much choice

Be their trusted adviser—confident and authoritative

Make no assumptions. Don’t just offer the solution that you would want—offer what you would want if you were them, knowing what you know.

Explain that, “based on where you are now, where you’re trying to get to, the obstacles in your way and how fast you want to get, this is the best solution for you.”

Making it work

The GLOSS Method™ relies on a few things:

Dynamic Pricing: A fixed pricing model that you can flex based on the client's circumstances and required service levels.

Client-facing: The entire process—every step—needs to be completed with the client.

Instant Documentation: You need to be able to produce the required documentation in front of the client, such as a proposal and a letter of engagement. This is where GoProposal can help.

Over the last 12 months we've been able to increase our revenue by 40%. Half of that growth has come from existing clients and that's been through the level of conversation we've been able to have with them.
James Ashford — GoProposal

The GLOSS Method™ is a simple-to-follow, transparent process that your entire team can confidently communicate to the client. It helps you to bring them on a journey with you and explain to them why you're taking them there. Ultimately, it will help your firm maximize the value you’re providing.

James Ashford

Working with leading firms around the world, James helps practices become more profitable and systemize their processes to deliver maximum value and memorable service to their clients. He does this through challenging outdated pricing methods and mindsets, implementing powerful pricing and proposal systems and leveraging entire firms to sell more through consultative sales techniques.

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